It's all so EXTREME

Hard sun, hard rain.  And hard snow.  ...above the freezing level, that is.

Canadians love to talk about the weather.  It irritates my dad.  We brag about our sufferings and wear the extremes like a badge of honour when talking to friends and relations outside the reaches of our thundercloud.  The weather news throws us weather stats like candies at a parade, which we in turn throw at our friends and relations in a full-on candy-throwing war of who's got the best shot.  We've earned these badges, with awe-struck gazes out the window from our warm couch vantage points.

"They" told me when I moved here that Squamish might see a dusting or two of snow throughout the winter, but it wouldn't stick around.  In December, I went outside one evening to rescue the little trees from a potential long night of forward bending under the accumulating heavy snow:

Dec.17:  Snow falling heavily on shore pines

Dec.18: 21 cm / nearly 9 inches of snow in 24 hours, in a place that is said
to see a "dusting" or two of snow in the winter

The following morning, in solidarity with the neighbours, we worked on clearing 21 cm / nearly 9 inches of snow with dee-dee little avalanche shovels (or similar).

I didn't own a proper sidewalk-shovel - "they" indirectly told me I didn't need one!  My very nice neighbour next door eventually went out and bought one (I am picturing mad auctions and fights in in front of the Home Hardware, people bidding $1000 on the last couple of shovels remaining), and kindly helped me finish.

I own a shovel now, and have used it since.

My brother. John. recently moved to the extreme east coast (as in, he's as far east as you can possibly get in Canada), and posted photos of his snow-shoveling woes:

John: "Aaaaaah... nothing like a freshly-shovelled driveway. Such a feeling of accomplishment.
Time to go inside and pour myself a nice...oh look, time to shovel the driveway again..."

John: "UPDATE: Since there was no f***ing way on god's good earth that I was shovelling
all of that this morning, I'd like to introduce you all to my young snowblowing neighbour, Eric."

I am using some of my free time to "learn" weather.  For example, when you spot these lovely 'lenticular' - or horse tail - clouds floating in, silently unnoticed, on your initially bluebird day, it means some "weather" is coming:

Nov.30: Lenticular clouds floating over Sky Pilot Mountain - viewed from
Alpen Peak - followed (closely!) by the incoming storm

I am also contemplating, in terms of temperature extremes, which is the bigger hardship when heading out to ski:

(a) getting out of the warm car into -30C, fiddling with boots and latches and bags and fiddly bits while fingers turn white, then to useless little stumps at the end of the limbs that supposedly demonstrate the superiority of home sapiens in the animal kingdom; eventually starting off on the skis at a ridiculous pace in order to force the core furnace into high gear to pump warmth back to the extremities, resulting in screaming barfies erupting in multiple digits, then having to stop 8 minutes later to remove the now-soggy-with-sweat down jacket, the nicely-warmed core temperature plummeting as the layer of sweat suddenly freezes while stopped to pack away the jacket, then setting off again at a ridiculous pace to generate more heat, eyes freezing shut as the rapid breathing exhaust condenses, then freezes, on your eyelashes...., OR

(b) getting out of the warm car into 0C, after working up a sweat getting as dressed as possible in the car to the outer most layer in order to be water-proofed from the downpour, working on boots and fiddly bits in sole-deep mud while water streams down any unsealed opening on your being, leaving bags and bits protected in the open car until the last second as rain soaks the car interior, unable to communicate with fellow skiers due to the drowning of all sound other than the rain and the swish-swish of hoods accosting the ears; eventually carrying the skis while the shoulder cramps in its awkward ski-carrying position, until there is enough of a connected snow path to put them on and follow.

Both cases even out after the first half hour, when you've found the groove and are comfortably and steadily marching on.  But man...  Colin suggests I might be more comfortable on the couch at home.

Jan.21:  Avalanche Report - Sea-to-Sky Area

It should be noted, the skies and contemplations don't tell me everything.  Yesterday I was thinking of taking my skies up the gondola, until I saw the avy report...

Instead I stayed on the figurative couch, listening to the extreme rain pounding down while the extreme snow slabs built up in the mountains above, then went for a walk in the rain.

Current Job: Finding a Job

Today I sent out my 11th resume since the job hunt began.

I gave myself the summer off after moving to Squamish, with the promise that I would begin the hunt on September 1.  While last winter's sabbatical and travels had certainly aided in the unwinding process required after nearly 15 years with the same large corporate entity, the last few of which were spent simultaneously as a muzzled hamster (on a perpetually speeding-up wheel) and a frog (in a perpetually heating-up cauldron of hot water), the self-managed moving had rewound some of the unwinding.  Plus I was in a spectacularly huge new playground.

After an equally-spectacular hot and dry summer - which, among other great things about this place, meant putting off having to buy a lawnmower to cut the grass since the grass stopped growing, the entire summer's worth of rain began falling on Aug.28.  Over 200mm of rain in one week.  The average for August is about 30mm; Aug.31 alone saw over 80mm.  Hard sun, hard rain - I like it..

So I started - few days early - the time-consuming, brain-numbing, eye-crossing uphill climb of getting my resume up to date.  And creating a LinkedIn account (my friends assured me it was NOT like facebook if you didn't t let it be).  I hadn't done much with the resume for ten years, and I soon learned styles had changed, content had changed, layout had changed.  Colin saw my old resume and said "wow, that is so 80's!".  Not likely - I was in grade school in the 80's.  But I got the point.

WorkBC Squamish - #302, 37989 Cleveland Ave (thanks Google streetview)

At one point while meandering around the streets of downtown Squamish, I had noticed the WorkBC Job Centre sign.  Nice place in the new "Sea-to-Sky-style" building, and I acquired some good tips:

• the work centre compiles Squamish and Sea-to-Sky area jobs weekly from a number of websites into a one-stop-shopping list - available online or in print at the centre
• opportunities for engineers are limited-to-none - networking will be key (ugh.)
• Squamish Chamber of Commerce hosts regular "After 5" Business Socials which are an after-work open house for local business people to mingle - keep an eye on the Chamber of Commerce events to see when the next one is scheduled (advance sign-up required)
• plenty of up-to-date materials available to read about resume-writing, cover letters, interviews, etc. - I spent an afternoon there reading the centre's copy of Jane Foss's book "Ridiculously Awesome Resume" in parallel with editing a general draft of mine (0 job offers so far - blame me, or Jane??)

Networking.  Hard work, so not my style.  I attended an After 5 event in November, and instead of coming away battered and bruised by all the confident people who hit me for saying something dumb, or nothing at all, I had interesting conversations, drank some wine, and got a contact and invitation to send in a resume.  That's more than I had before.

I also sampled many of Squamish's coffee-shop satellite offices while writing and researching, including at the top of the gondola (combined with a hike or run).  A change of scenery from my own desk, plus I gained another contact as well.  The Adventure Centre and top-of-gondola tie for favourite.

Top of Sea-to-Sky Gondola - Sep.17, quietly just me, my pack and the rain

Top of Sea-to-Sky Gondola - Oct.6

Top of Sea-to-Sky Gondola - Dec.9, with a roasty fire going

So, 11 resumes since Aug.27...  And 10 meetings / phone interviews / networking events, some related to the resumes, some not...

That's roughly one resume and one meeting every two weeks, a couple of each a month.
Keeping in mind that each resume requires time to taylor it to the job, research the business, and create a cover letter.  And I'm being picky - I want to do something with my good skills, not something that will help me improve my bad ones, or one that involves a big portion of things I don't like.  Yeah, I'm OK with that for now.

"Find Job work" checked off today's to-do list.  I welcome any further suggestions.

Time to go for a run now, then off to the climbing gym.

Why are we here?

There are a good collection of reasons why we - Colin and I - are here.  In Squamish.  We were born with with the receptors and innate characteristics which feed off this kind of place.  We each individually had the privilege of being raised in an established first world home, which provided the freedom and opportunity to pursue education, play, and earn a sustainable living.  And we drove here.

The U-haul truck left Calgary in June of 2015 with us, all of Colin's possessions and half of mine (the rest came later), and made its way across the three major mountain ranges that separate the Alberta prairies from the BC coast.

Rogers Pass, BC - in the Columbia Mountains

Colin arrived via Hungerton, Thurleston, Croft, Bristol, Leeds, Bristol, London, Bristol - all UK, Hong Kong, Ulaan Bataar - Mongolia, The Maldives, Bangkok, Jubail - Saudi Arabia, London, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calgary (where we met), Canmore, and Calgary.

I arrived via Edmonton, Reading - UK, Edmonton, Reading, Edmonton, Vancouver, Edmonton, Red Deer, Edmonton, Calgary, short stints in Montreal / Revelstoke / Coquitlam / St.Paul-Minneapolis / Moose Jaw / Chicago, Cranbrook, Golden, and lastly Calgary.

We rolled into Squamish, consolidated our "stuff" into our new house and now shared quarters, and here we are.

I got a telescope for Christmas, and you know what?  You have to zoom out to a 20 light-year cube centred around the earth just to get another 17 stars into the area of our solar system [1].  That's a 189,000,000,000,000-km cube,  The closest star to earth is the Alpha Centauri system at 4.3 light years away.  That's astronomical.  Ha.  The space in between the stars contains less than one atom per cubic cm (on earth, there are about 10 million trillion (10^18) atoms per cubic cm of air at sea level) [1].

All that to say, it's truly confounding that we exist, nevermind that we are here.  In Squamish.

As for why, we'll get to that...


[1] "Nightwatch" - Terence Dickenson, Revised Fourth Edition